I had to share this terribly useful focus methodology that’ll help you get stuff done at work. This is of particular significance to those who are drowning in social media (hint to self). But, I digress.

Here are some useful tips in maintaining a zone of concentration while at work.

While you’re enjoying the thought of such a simple/effective workstyle, go grab a print-friendly PDF of these simple productivity tips that you can hang in your work cube.

SHARE WITH FRIENDS:

I hear this all the time – what’s the deal with all the Twitter Noise – not noise on Twitter, but the buzz about Twitter. While explaining the value proposition of Twitter to professionals, I realize that its true value surfaces only when you eliminate the noise inside of Twitter.

So, here’s a quick guide to implementing those filters real quick that’ll then allow you to enhance your productivity not detract from it, while using a service as noisy as Twitter.

Depending on how much time you have (2 minutes or 10 minutes), choose either LinkedIn’s Company Buzz app or TweetDeck (An Adobe Air App) to customize your productive Twitter experience. Today, I’ll walk you through the 2 step installation process for Company Buzz.

Step 2. While one-click-installing the app, you can select whether you want to app to be displayed either just on your profile or on your LinkedIn homepage as well. Update Settings, and Boom!

A – List of most recent “company” related tweets. In my case “LinkedIn”

B – Topics you’d like to follow. While, installation pulls up the most recent tweets of your current company, you can also set up additional topics/keywords to follow – like your name (@mariosundar or “Mario Sundar”)

C – Buzz words that are closely associated with tweets related to the topic that can be used to further filter through the tweet volume you see in A

D – Trends based on the volume of tweets in a week, related to the topic

Well, if you define marketing as advertising, then it’s clear you need the product first. Marketing is not the same as advertising. Advertising is a tiny slice of what marketing is today, and in fact, it’s pretty clear that the marketing has to come before the product, not after. As Jon points out, the Prius was developed after the marketing thinking was done.

Now, that’s how Steve Jobs probably thinks before he creates the next Apple wonder of the world! But, interestingly enough, I just realized that movie marketing functions in exactly the same way. You dream up the movie trailer with its target audience in mind before you even attempt to put together a movie.

The producer Brian Grazer, whose films include “Frost/Nixon” and “A Beautiful Mind,” mentioned a potential remake of a James Dean film: “I have the book ‘East of Eden’ and a script by Paul Attanasio”—an A-list screenwriter—“but I don’t know how I’d ever make it, because I don’t know how I’d sell it. With this material, I can’t reach you emotionally, tell the story, or be visually transcendent in a thirty-second TV spot. And there’s no ‘Holy s#$!’ moment for the trailer.”

Some laws are universal.

SHARE WITH FRIENDS:

How many of you have a friend who has lost a job recently? I’m sure many hands were raised as they read this. It’s unfortunate that the recent spate of layoffs continue unabated with Macy’s laying off 7000 employees today; an unfortunate follow-up to last week’s record setting 75K layoffs in one day.

I know of at least 5 friends who have lost a job in the past month. So, expanding on Guy Kawasaki’s post from earlier today (10 Tips to use LinkedIn to find a job), here are three quick tips to use the social media tools at your disposal to find that elusive dream job.

1. Use social media megaphones to update your status

Depending on the social media channels that you engage in, update your status on all of them that you’re looking for a job. In my case, my obvious choices would be LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and of course my blog. In addition, you may want to use a service like ping.fm that updates a slew of social networks’ status (all of the above 4) from one place.

2. Do smart research

But random status updates alone can’t do much good. Use all the company research goodness that you can find on LinkedIn to find the right people in your dream companies to network with. For e.g. find our historical career paths at companies, info on hiring managers, etc.

And, finally, do take the time to build your online networks (social or professional) if you’d really like to benefit from the many applications and tools that a site like LinkedIn affords. Remember: the bigger your network is, the more chances you have at reaching the right people. Size does matter.